Carbon removal techniques come in two main flavors—the technological and the natural—but also increasingly a melding of the two. The dominant technology at the moment is direct air capture, or DAC. This involves giant machines sucking in air and filtering out the CO2. Like an air purifier filters dust out of your indoor air, DAC […]
Read MoreA dense rainforest or other verdant terrestrial vegetation may be what first comes to mind at the mention of photosynthesis. Yet the clouds of phytoplankton that fill the oceans are the major drivers of that process in nature. The plantlike single-celled aquatic microbes generate more than 50 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, and […]
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Read MoreThis contraction means the upper atmosphere is becoming less dense, which in turn reduces drag on satellites and other objects in low orbit—by around a third by 2070, calculates Ingrid Cnossen, a research fellow at the British Antarctic Survey. On the face of it, this is good news for satellite operators. Their payloads should stay […]
Read MoreOK, a couple of quick points. This is just the surface temperature of the Earth. Since the light from the sun just hits the surface and the Earth radiates from the surface, this ignores any interactions with the very hot molten core. Also, notice that this is quite a bit colder than the actual average […]
Read MoreIn an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a pair of outspoken scientists reveal how warp drives—the show’s ubiquitous propulsion system used to get travelers around space—can be incredibly environmentally destructive. From then on, the characters take care to limit the damage of their spaceflights. Could a similar scenario now play out in the […]
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